


Entropy

by tricksterity



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Post-Canon, contains graphic gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterity/pseuds/tricksterity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tries to stay awake. Shepard blinks with one eye and feels the blood on her face harden and crack and itch like paint and she waits, every second and eternity as her lungs breathe without her consent and her body functions far past what it should.</p><p>She waits, and waits, and she waits…</p><p>And then the rubble shifts.</p><p>*</p><p>(aka your classic post-destroy Garrus-finds-Shepard-alive fanfic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entropy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexei_hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexei_hecate/gifts).



> This is my first Mass Effect fanfic, so please be gentle!!! Not sure why it took me so long to put something up.

Shepard remembers falling.

 

She remembers a blaze of bright red – crimson like blood throwing her backwards, the ground beneath her shattering under the force of the blast. The Citadel had cracked and fallen away beneath her, glass shattering in all directions. She remembers falling as the light grew brighter and enveloped the stars.

 

Why does she always fall?

 

She doesn’t remember landing. Her surroundings are dark and black, like the empty void of space without the pinprick lights of stars to keep it company. It feels like death, and yet it isn’t. She has died, and this is not it, but it is close.

 

The child appears.

 

He is blindingly bright in this abyss, and he looks up at her with curiosity, and a hundred other emotions Shepard does not recognize, nor does she care to; he stares at her for what seems like forever.

 

“I’m surprised,” he says. Shepard says nothing. “I didn’t think you’d do it.”

 

“You thought wrong,” she replies. “I wouldn’t have done anything else.”

 

The child continues to look at her, stare up at her, and she can see right through him and further into the void, like there is depth where there is none, how can she see further into nothingness?

 

“You aren’t dead,” the child says.

 

Shepard blinks. “I didn’t think so, I’ve done that before.”

 

“Would you like to?” the child asks. This time Shepard really pays attention to him. His face gives nothing away now – a simple question with a thousand different answers and Shepard can’t give any. She is tired, she knows that much. She is exhausted and drained and when she thought she couldn’t possibly go any further she had kept on going, past what she ever thought she could do. She ponders the fact that perhaps the implants and cybernetics had been the only things keeping her going.

 

What kept her going now?

 

As soon as she asks herself the question, and answer forms almost at the same time. There is something that the child must see in her, because he smiles, and then he disappears.

 

There is a blissful moment of nothingness and then everything crashes back down around her.

 

Shepard gasps – a wet, gurgling noise as the blood pools in her throat. She can’t feel anything and yet everything at the same time, her body is numb and screaming with pain. It takes an eternity for Shepard to even think of anything outside the all-consuming agony, to feel the blood sluggishly pumping through her, spilling out onto the rubble below. Her heart is beating forcefully and stubbornly, and Shepard can feel the metal encasing it, can _feel_ it contracting around her heart, forcing it to continue beating though the organ is all but dead.

 

Her lungs feel like pumps. They expand and contract without her permission, jerky and stutter-stopping because the tech must’ve been shattered in the fall along with the rest of her body. Shepard can’t do anything but let the technology control her heart, pump her blood, expand her lungs like she is passive in her own existence, has no control over her body.

 

It takes even longer for her to realize that she can _see_ this happening, can see the dark blue glint of what remains of her armor that somehow kept everything contained enough for her to live. She can see the horrifying twist of her legs and can feel the raw pain when the jagged edge of her bones scrape against her skin, gleaming white in the almost-dark, with every single breath and forcible pump of blood.

 

She can see this, and there is light. One of her eyes is non-functioning, her visor shattered in the fall and she can feel that too, the glass shards in her eye socket. She turns a millimeter and sees a small hole in the rubble, sunlight shining through, and her salvation. She reaches up with an arm and grips the edge – she has enough functioning muscles in that arm even though her tendons scream as they scrape up against each other, and she pulls herself forward an agonizing inch.

 

She can’t even scream as the pain blinds her, wipes out everything from existence again except for itself. After an eternity she relaxes her broken body down and feels everything move inside her like she is a carcass holding loose meat together. She can feel her knuckles being scraped down to the bone as she shoves her hand out the small hole but that is nothing compared to the rest.

 

She can feel a cool breeze wash past her ebony skin and sting at the raw edges of her new wounds. Her wrist is caught now, and her tense muscles relax, and her shoulder joint pulls and screams at her, but she does not care. Pain is her existence and this is her only way free.

 

She tries to stay awake. Shepard blinks with one eye and feels the blood on her face harden and crack and itch like paint and she waits, every second and eternity as her lungs breathe without her consent and her body functions far past what it should.

 

She waits, and waits, and she _waits_ …

 

She waits a second, and a minute, and a day and a week and a month and a year; a century passes and then millennia, and the universe spins and expands and the stars collapse in on themselves, galaxies collide and singularities swallow up existence and nothing remains but Shepard and her broken, working body.

 

She

 

Is

 

Alive.

 

But nothing else is.

 

Nothing exists but her.

 

And then the rubble shifts.

 

It wriggles, and then pulls away entirely and sunshine pours down onto her carcass and the blurry shape before her solidifies itself – so familiar that her heart nearly gives out again.

 

“ _Garrus_ ,” she breathes, and blood pours from her lips, and he yells for something but she doesn’t hear because she is alive and so is he, and the first touch of his finger to her cheek almost drowns out the agony. Her eyes flutter closed and his sub-vocals lull her to sleep, and she knows that she is okay.

 

Existence rolls back around with the sound of an even, steady beeping noise and the weight of a hand on hers.

 

Her eyes blink open – both of them, probably courtesy of Miranda Lawson, again – and she looks down.

 

“I knew you’d find me,” she breathes, and he looks at her like he’s seen a ghost, and that is what she is. She is a ghost of herself, and so is he, but they are together and that is all that matters.


End file.
